The present disclosure relates to watches (e.g., wristwatches) providing world-wide time information. More particularly, it relates to analog-type display watches providing a user with the ability to quickly determine the current time in any time zone in the world.
Frequent business travelers that visit various geographies struggle with the constant need to reset their watch or to use various time telling websites or apps to quickly check the current local time of various other locations. While attempts have been made to develop an analog-type watch (i.e., a circular, twelve hour clock display with hour and minute hands) that displays information indicative of the current time in multiple other locales, an easy-to-use and easily understood construction has not been achieved. The difficulties in devising a satisfactory watch design are not surprising given the complexities of time zone designations across the globe. As a point of reference, there are twenty-four official time zones in the world, each divided into units of one hour relative to the coordinated universal time (UTC). Additional, unofficial time zones that have been implemented in various locales set at a non-integer multiple of one hour (e.g., set an increment of a half-hour or quarter-hour relative to the UTC), bringing the total number of time zones to thirty-seven. These differences are desirably accounted for by the watch's display. Making the time difference calculation and display from one time zone to another even more difficult is the concept of daylight savings time. Different locales across the globe institute daylight savings at different times of the year (and yet other locales do not practice daylight savings). It is exceedingly difficult for an analog-type watch display to account for daylight savings time differences in multiple locales without requiring complicated mental calculations or manual intervention by the user.
For example, current multi-time zone watches exist that represent different time zones as multiple individual dials without indication of the location to which the display time is correlated to. Additionally, these watches required the user to manually set the time for each display, including making shifts for daylight savings time.
Other watches have taken the approach of providing a distinct interface displaying the name or abbreviation of the locale whose time is being displayed. The user sets the primary time zone by rotating a bezel in a setup mode of the watch to the correct city by aligning the city with a designated position and then inputting the current time. The user is then able to adjust the bezel to an alternate city, which causes a secondary hour hand on the watch to adjust to the current local time (hour) of the selected city. Even with watches of this type (preprogrammed time zone offsets), however, the user is still required to manually adjust the primary display for daylight savings time or at the very least manually activate a daylight savings time mode of operation.
In light of the above, a need exists for a world watch that displays current time information for multiple locales in an easy-to-understand format and that automatically accounts for daylight savings conventions in each region of interest.